Spiritual Direction

Think about the difference between "direction" (singular) and "directions" (plural). "I need direction in my life," means something completely different from "I need directions to the site."

Wouldn't it be great if GPS marketed an app for "Spiritual Directions?" I can hear it now: that infuriating voice that is always telling us to make the first safe and legal u-turn "recalculating" our route to include a turn that threatens to lead us astray.

If only it were that simple.

I talked with a friend who said she felt as though she was losing her faith. We wondered together if that was an entirely bad thing. I knew her to have grown up in a church and family in which no one was to question the teachings of the pastor, yet the pastor abused his access to vulnerable people. Questions were not permissible because they gave voice to the doubting of faith in the leaders of the church, who claimed to be called by God to their leadership positions. Yet many of those same parishioners were being abused by that faith. She had not explored church, spirituality, or religion further; she simply stopped attending. She didn't build a new faith on a firmer foundation, but rather, she let her faith construct shrivel up unattended.

The difficulty with "direction," rather than "directions," is that it doesn't offer a clear, black-and-white path or destination. Instead, it gives us the tools we need to use the wisdom God gave us, in consultation and community with others who sojourn with us.

So, instead of the GPS voice giving step-by-step, inch-by-inch instructions, we have to be still and know that God is God. I continually try to remind myself of this: "Have patience with yourself; you'll get there in time." It might be a different "there" than i expected, and at a different time.

Next step: Invent a Universal Positioning System ;)...